Science Sundays

Trumpery: worthless nonsense, something that is, simultaneously, deceitful and showy. Cairo explains how to fight fake data, fake facts, fake visualization, demonstrating how choices a data-visualization designer makes have significant impact on how an audience perceives data. He shares strategies to improve rational thinking and understand probability and uncertainty as ways to fight back against a deluge of misinformation.

Contemporary humanity enjoys mobility levels that are unprecedented in history. While this has benefits, it also has enormous social, health and environmental costs. Resolving these costs is crucial if civilization is to survive the 21st century — a world that will see 10 billion people, most of whom will crowd into cities. This lecture will describe the concept of sustainable transportation and how new, data-driven science allows scholars and practitioners to address these essential issues.

Mindfulness meditation has been practiced for centuries, but is now finding its place in Western discourse. Prakash discusses research examining the effect of training in practices of mindfulness meditation for brain and cognitive health, with a special emphasis on the aging brain.

Despite an ever-growing dependency on science and technology, we are seeing a decline in scientific literacy. Bertley discusses this duality and challenges us to become advocates for science. Highlighting wide-ranging technological advances, he emphasizes the necessity of basic scientific literacy and appreciation for the scientific process, whatever our career paths.

Every decade, politicians update voting districts to account for population shifts as measured by the U.S. Census. Of course, partisan politicians are inclined to draw maps that favor their own party, resulting in partisan gerrymandering. In this episode, Dustin G. Mixon will explore how tools from mathematics can help to deter this growing threat to democracy.